


Drowning in the Days that Didn’t Work Out

by FoxCollector



Series: Love Is Much Worse [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, In a way, M/M, No happy endings, Or Is he?, all downhill from here, and also dying, because Madara is currently dead, dealing with the fallout of Madara leaving the Village, past MadaTobi, probably sad?, vaguely creepy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 10:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12011163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxCollector/pseuds/FoxCollector
Summary: Something is terribly wrong and it takes him a moment to place it. Madara. He felt Madara’s chakra. He’s sure of it. That had to be what had woken him up.But that couldn’t be.Madara is dead.





	Drowning in the Days that Didn’t Work Out

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so here I am, rolling along writing depressing things when I want to write the happy smut. I'm just about done with all this, I think, it ain't getting any happier though.
> 
> Title comes from Amano Tsukiko's "Koe", though obviously translated into English. I thought it kind of fit.
> 
> Read, enjoy, review!

            Tobirama wakes up with a jolt. His heart races in his chest and he gasps air in like he was choking in his sleep.

            His room is still and silent. He can feel Hashirama’s steady chakra, warm and subdued – sleeping then – and Mito’s peaceful signature. He can’t place what’s wrong.

            There is nothing. And maybe nothing _is_ wrong.

            Everything is as it should be, but for an emptiness in the air.

            There’s something lingering on his senses; a disturbance in the atmosphere, like lightning, like O-zone and fire. Like Madara.

            Something is terribly wrong and it takes him a moment to place it. Madara. He felt Madara’s chakra. He’s sure of it. That had to be what had woken him up.

            But that couldn’t be.

            Madara is dead. He knows this, tended to the corpse earlier that day (and there shouldn’t _be_ a corpse, he should have destroyed Madara’s body, but he just couldn’t bring himself to), there is no way it was Madara.

            In the back of his mind he thinks maybe it was Madara’s spirit come to torment him in the night the way he always used to, but he doesn’t really believe in that. He believes that once you’re dead, you’re dead. Wherever your soul goes, it isn’t anywhere nearby, it’s somewhere deep and endless; somewhere it can be called back from, slipping through cracks between worlds to crawl back into former skin, but somewhere too far away to feel.

            But he _felt_ it. The impression in the air that only Madara could leave.

            It makes him ache deep inside, makes the emptiness in his chest burn. He hates it. It makes him feel small and weak, and he wants to be held, wishes there was someone to comfort him. He almost wishes he could go to Madara, the way he used to when he woke up in the night and ached.

            But even if he went to Madara, he would be cold, and there would be no comfort.

            Because Madara is dead, and he took a part of Tobirama with him. Even though Tobirama thought he couldn’t take anymore.

            He thinks of the unnatural slack of Madara’s face, the way he only vaguely resembled himself. Madara’s attractiveness stemmed for the most part from his vivacity, his vitality. His face was never impassive, his eyes were always full and his expressions were always changing, and death did him no favours. It makes Tobirama think it isn’t really him. But Hashirama says it is, and it is, whether or not he wants it to be.

            Madara is dead.

            And yet.

            There’s a vision in his mind of Madara leaving his sealed coffin, rising from the dead in a way his reanimations never could, and it makes him shudder.

            Something crawls down his spine, a chill in the humid air, and he gets up. He pulls on a coat and sandals, not bothering to change from his sleep-yukata, and goes to Madara.

            The tomb is silent. Cold, but silent. It feels empty and the feeling settles in the hole in his chest, as though it can make the hole endless. He checks briefly in the coffin, and not-Madara is still there, still lying in death’s embrace. He eyes the body briefly, as though Madara might sit up at any moment.

            But he doesn’t.

            Tobirama glances around the room. Everything seems right. There is blood in the bowl on the table, and he scowls. He was sure he’d cleaned everything up after the autopsy, but he’d been distracted. He decides to leave the bowl until morning.

            He sits at the side of the coffin, not looking at the body inside. He feels pathetic.

            He should just find someone else. Or he could go to Hashirama, his brother would never turn him away if he needed a moment of his time.

            But he doesn’t.

            Tobirama sits in a tomb as empty as he is, and he holds himself. He only allows himself these moments of weakness when he knows no one else will see, and no one else will know.

            Madara doesn’t seem like himself, and Tobirama knows it’s only him. It’s only what he wants; that it isn’t Madara lying there.

            He loves and hates Madara in equal measure, and he hates that he still loves Madara. Even after Madara ruined him and left. And he hates that Madara is gone.

            Emptiness is poor company.


End file.
